


Tell Me Where You Hide

by lady_ragnell



Category: Killjoys (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, Implied Violence, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 17:03:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9773471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: Johnny and Clara are working on a job together when a wrench gets thrown in the works.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Scribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribe/gifts).



> Written for **Scribe** for a fic-for-charity post on my tumblr, with my thanks both for the donation and for giving me the chance to write in this fandom again!
> 
> Title from Jasmine Thompson's "Run," which is an excellent Dutch & Johnny song.

“Don't look at the door,” says Clara, and Johnny has to grit his teeth against the instinct to disobey her immediately. He always wants to know what's going on, especially when Clara suddenly sounds sharp and worried. They're just supposed to be doing a little research, in and out before anything really dangerous happens, and this is supposed to be one of the safer parts of the whole op, sitting in a bar after a shift listening for gossip.

“Trouble?”

“She's a day early.”

That's bad. He doesn't twitch for his weapon, because nobody's allowed weapons in this very exclusive trading post, and they were tempting fate enough with the modifications they put on Clara to let her get hired into the stock room with him. Besides, she's got no reason to know who Johnny is, much less Clara. He's the one who's going to recognize her, not the other way around. “Why is she here?” he hisses, even though he knows she doesn't know.

“Maybe she left ahead of schedule, I don't know. We need to abort.”

“We still don't know what she's here for.”

“We found her once, we can find her again. Let's get out of here.”

Johnny wants to argue, but this is the smart play. They're not ready for this. They were barely ready for the recon, but it was the only opportunity they could find, so they decided to make the stupid choice. Apparently it really was stupid. “Fine. Give it a couple minutes, so it doesn't look like we're running off just because she got here.”

“Might not have that. I think she spotted us.”

Now he has to turn around. He's never been able to stand not knowing what kind of shit he's in.

Johnny turns around right into Aneela's gaze. She's coolly ignoring some man who's hovering around, offering to get her something, probably, and she looks like the Dutch in his worst nightmares, the ones where she freezes him out for leaving her. She looks like the Dutch he imagines she might be if she was still a Yardeen and far too good to even look at a Jaqobis twice.

And for one second, not even a second, all that chill and power cracks, lets something raw and angry and sad through, and the whole game changes.

*

“I can't contact Lucy,” says Clara in their room later, all the surveillance jammed, looped on them settling down for bed. “You're sure it's Dutch?”

“Yeah, I'm sure. And she's here to figure out what Aneela wants just like we are, but her play is a lot riskier than ours. Aneela is supposed to show up here tomorrow, and Dutch needs to be out.”

“Nobody with her.”

“D'avin is. Maybe he's on Lucy outside of the range of the station's scanners, but D'av wouldn't leave her.” Like John did.

“So what are we supposed to do? Talk to her?”

“No. That would blow all our covers. We've got to find what Aneela wants tomorrow. As soon as we're on shift. Dutch isn't going to leave without it.”

Clara doesn't ask if he's sure. She doesn't ask if this is going to get him pulled back into Dutch's war. The answer to both of those question is yes, obviously. “I'll keep trying to get in touch with Lucy,” she says, and that's the end of it.

*

“May I ask,” Johnny's boss is saying, “what you're here looking for?”

Johnny exchanges a look with Clara. It's too soon. They've looked through all the purchases that have come through this outpost since they heard Aneela was supposed to come here, but nothing is sticking out, nothing is _right_. And if they don't know, Dutch can't know, and if Dutch doesn't know, they're going to find out very quickly that she's the wrong woman, and they're going to serve her to Aneela on a silver platter.

He's learned a thing or two about Aneela since he left, not quite by accident (he was always going to get pulled back into Dutch's war). She's not the kind of person you want to be served to.

“Don't test my patience,” says Dutch. “You know why I'm here.”

It's a good gambit, and she says it right. Not threatening, but bored. There's Delle Seyah in that tone, and it makes Johnny shiver and clench his fists before he ducks his head and goes back to work.

“You understand, it's a matter of policy, to make everything clear and secure. You know how it is.” He's one of the nastier bosses Johnny has ever faked working for, but he's terrified of Aneela. That says a lot.

“I think it's clear.” And there's the Yardeen ice, right on cue. “I'm sure even your stockboy thinks it's clear.”

Johnny freezes, but he thinks he would freeze if it was really Aneela, so he doesn't worry too much about that. He just worries about the fact that he doesn't have Dutch's answer, that she relied on him and he failed her. “I don't know what you're talking about, ma'am.” She'll get that message, anyway.

“I think you do.”

Clara isn't right next to him, busy cataloging a shelf full of ammunition from outdated weapons, but he can almost hear he breathe in, get ready to use Alice to get them out of there. They don't know where Lucy is, their exit isn't supposed to come for another two days, and there are enough security measures around that fighting their way out is the next best thing to suicide, but it's comforting that she's ready, anyway.

But she doesn't need to be ready, because he's looking at the outdated bullets she groaned about having to sort through before they checked in this morning, and he thinks about how old Aneela is, how maybe she likes to use old tech sometimes because she trusts it more than learning something new, and how that's got its own kind of security, when all the tech people use to hack these days is too advanced for it.

In one of the shipment boxes Johnny reorganized on his first day on the job, there was a rack of antique data storage. They didn't have any equipment to check what was on the storage, and he was told to dust it off and make it look pretty as a display piece, so maybe a museum or someone else who “appreciates antiques with a good pedigree” might take it off the outpost's hands.

He'd bet any joy he has that there's something she knows about on one of those drives.

“Sir?” says Johnny, because he doesn't want to get shot for breaking company policy when he's just figured out the answer to their riddle.

Dutch is supposed to ask for what she wants, and the boss wasn't suspicious before, but he is now that she brought Johnny into it. “Ma'am, I really must insist—”

Her knife is at his throat before he finishes, and that's a little too much Dutch, not someone who's used to having people kill on her behalf, just waving her hand and seeing it done. “Maybe you need a reminder that nobody insists on anything to me. You. Stockboy.” Johnny stands at attention. “Bring it to me.”

There's a very gentle buzz in Johnny's pocket, the work-tracker they have on him going off with a panic button alarm that's supposed to put employees on alert without buyers knowing that they're in trouble. Dutch and Johnny tipped their hand.

Clara is the one who breaks the stalemate. “Lucy's on the way in. Get it and get out,” she says, and then there's chaos.

Johnny doesn't worry about fighting their way out. Dutch, Clara, Lucy, D'avin, they've got him. They always do. He's not the fighting guy, he's the getting-the-storage guy, at least today. There are people coming, but he goes for the storage box where he put the antique after cataloging it, and he knows where Clara and Dutch are, falling into position, ready to cover him while they get out.

It shouldn't feel this easy, he shouldn't know what Dutch is going to do next, but he still does, and he's going right back to Lucy and everything and everyone that comes with that, so he's going to have to figure out what to do with all that.

Clara grabs his shoulder almost as soon as he's got his hands on the right box. “Come on, Jaqobis, let's get out of here.”

*

Everything is quiet on Lucy, even Lucy herself, who just said hello when Johnny boarded and then didn't say anything else even though he thinks she's the one person he could manage a real conversation with right now. Clara shoved past all of them to go to the cockpit and pilot them away from the outpost's defenses, especially considering Aneela is expected in just a few hours and she's going to be pissed and now aware that she has a double out there.

Fancy Lee is there, for reasons Johnny just doesn't have the energy to figure out, and after a couple minutes of awkward silence, he rolls his eyes and grabs D'avin's shoulder. “Come on, they're going to cry and hug and shit, not like we have a job to do or anything, but we may as well let them get it out of the way.”

And then he and Dutch are alone, and she looks cold and terrifying and untouchable again, wearing clothes nothing like her own, something in a too-familiar shade of green spread across her lips. “You left me,” she says, and her voice cracks around the words.

“Yeah.” He's not going to deny it, but he's not going to apologize either. Not when he murdered a Seyah of the Nine. He left to protect them as much as himself.

She lifts her chin. “Did you think I didn't mean it when I offered to run away with you? The offer was always open, Johnny. We didn't have to stay.”

“You can't make that offer anymore. You've got battles to fight, and you're not going to leave them behind because I needed time.” Dutch looks like he slapped her, which means she knows he's right. “I'm not saying you're wrong to do it. I'm just saying it's true.”

She turns away to start angrily fumbling at buckles, getting out of her disguise and swiping a hand across her mouth, leaving a smear across her face but making her look like herself again. “You started walking away long before I chose those battles.”

That's not fair, but it's not a lie, either. “You're the most important thing in my life, but you're not the only thing. And I'm sorry for leaving without telling you, and for lying to you about Pawter, but I had to get out, and if I'd talked to you about it, I wouldn't have left.”

“I need you. Today's job proved that. I wouldn't have made it out of there with anything useful if you weren't there. And I know it's selfish, but I just want you around. Can I convince you to stay this time? When this war is done, we can run as fast and as far as you want. We can open up a restaurant on Leith or marry into royalty or anything you want, if you don't want to be a killjoy anymore. I just need to do this, because I'm the only one I can.”

If Johnny didn't want to see Dutch again, he wouldn't have heard a piece of gossip about Aneela and convinced Clara to dive in headlong. He still needs time, but apparently he wants to be around Dutch again more. “I don't know,” he says, because he can be honest now. “But I'm willing to give it a shot. If you want to stay and fight ...” That's never been a part of them, but maybe it could be. There's a mirror to running, and it's staying. He never thought that would be so hard to offer.

Dutch sighs and looks away. There's a smear of green on the back of her hand too. Johnny hates that shade more than he ever thought he could hate a color. “Don't make me any promises yet.”

*

Clara is waiting for him in the cockpit when he goes up, leaving Dutch to wash her face off and giving them both a chance to think about things. “So are we staying for a while?”

“Yeah,” says Johnny, sitting down near her, back home again even if he's not sure what to do with that. “Yeah, I think we are.”


End file.
